Tuesday, 7 October 2014

The German language paperback editions of Uncle Montague's Tales of Terror turned up in the post. The Tales of Terror always look good in German - it seems to suit the books very well. I hope they read as well. I'm guessing they must do if they have gone into paperback.

I went along to the opening of the British Library's Terror and Wonder: the Gothic Imagination exhibition last Thursday. I had received an invite quite some time ago and I remember being flattered to be on the British Library's radar after a bit of a quiet year. But then, on the day before the opening, I had an email from Phil and Sarah Stokes who are in charge of Clive Barker's archive to tell me that a poster I did for Clive, way back in 1982, for a play of his - Frankenstein in Love - had been selected for display.

So that was why I had been given an invite, I assumed. I met up with fellow author Chris Edge (who took the photo of me above) and we went round together to hunt out my poster. And there it was - looking very important under a glass case and with other bits and pieces, like that Clive Barker poster idea up in the top right.

But as we carried on round I suddenly came face to face with a wall decorated with David Roberts's lovely illustration of Uncle Montague sitting in his armchair (it's on the wall behind me in the photograph). Then realised there was a glass case with Uncle Montague's Tales of Terror in it (alongside Chris Riddell's Goth Girl and Patrick Ness's A Monster Calls. It was a massive honour to be included in a show that features many of my heroes - and many of the inspirations for writing the stories in the first place.

It was such a lovely surprise - although why it was a surprise is a bit of a mystery. I wasn't told and neither it seems was Bloomsbury. It was great to see children's Gothic fiction being acknowledged like this but odd for the creators to be left slightly out of the loop. There is a schools programme and events in connection with the exhibition, which is run in conjunction with the BBC, for the life of the show, which runs until January 2015. I hope get to do something - maybe with my old mate Chris Riddell.

Meanwhile - if you are anywhere near the British Library - or even if you're not - get yourself along to the exhibition, which is stuffed full of fascinating things.

Monday, 29 September 2014

I'm delighted to be say that The Dead Men Stood Together has been included on the longlist for the UKLA Children's Book Award in the 12-16+ category. I'm up against some incredible writers so I will be very lucky to make it to the shortlist, but it is an honour as always to be noticed at all.

I'm finally able to share with you the cover for my first book with the wonderful Barrington Stoke who publish books for dyslexic and struggling readers. It is set in England in World War II and tells the story of a boy and his mother who leave London and go to the Suffolk coast to claim an inheritance and come face to face with an ancient evil.

Wednesday, 10 September 2014

Recently there has been one of those Facebook list things - where someone writes a list and then nominates three other people who write a list and nominate...and so on. The subject of the list this time has been '10 books that have stayed with you'.

Like most people I could write a different list every day for different reasons. It depends on my mood - and my memory. It did, however, make me think I might go through my bookshelves and pick out books that I think have made a particular impact on me for whatever reason.

I can't remember when I first read Franz Kafka's The Trial - some time in my twenties I would imagine. What I am pretty sure of though, is that I would not be the same person had I not read it - not that it changed me so much as confirmed in me something that was already there.

The book has stayed with me like a half-remembered dream and the beginning is a favourite of mine:

Someone must have been telling lies about Joseph K, for without having done anything wrong he was arrested one fine morning.

The book was written at the beginning of the First World War and not published until 1925, after Kafka's death, but that paranoid beginning seems to be perpetually relevant. It could have been written in the 1950s, the 1970s - or yesterday.

I remember vividly the last passage too, where Joseph K is lead through town to a quarry to be stabbed 'Like a dog!' with a butcher's knife. This kind of bleakness has given Kafka a reputation for miserablism but he in fact expressed frustration that people did not recognise the humour in his work - dark though that humour undoubtedly is.

The section I remember most of all is the strange parable told in the novel called Before the Law. In this story a 'man from the country' comes and tries to gain admission to 'the Law' at a doorway in a wall, but the guard tells him it is not possible to gain admittance at that time. He is kept waiting for years until he is weak and near to death. He manages to summon the energy to ask the guard why in all the years he has waited there no other person has tried to gain entry. The guard tells him that no one could gain entry at that door because that door was meant for him and him alone and 'I am now going to shut it!'

It's hard to judge a style when you are reading in translation and in the case of Kafka's novels, reading fragments (although Before the Law was actually published on its own in his lifetime), but there is something magical about the way that story is structured. I loved it then and still re-read it occasionally and whenever I do it re-awakens something in me - something in the way I think about stories and about writing.

You can hear Orson Welles reading it in his film of The Trial with Anthony Perkins as Joseph K.

Monday, 8 September 2014

We have watched Alien and Aliens in the last few days. I had not seen either movie for a long time - apart from the occasional clip or coming across them as I flicked through the channels looking for something to watch.

Together with some friends, I bunked off college one afternoon to watch Alien when it first came out. There was so much hype surrounding it. We were terrified. I can't say that I was terrified this time round, but it still looks pretty good, all things considered.

Technology - imagined technology - dates very quickly. The tiny computer screens with their luminous letters on black screens and banks of flashing lights look a bit silly now of course, but the ship itself has become a template for so many spaceship interiors. It was the first film I remember seeing where the interiors in a spacecraft were dirty and industrial - and badly lit.

That bad lighting is essential of course. Because Alien is essentially a 'creepy old house' movie. It is like an old Universal monster movie, or a slasher movie like Halloween, with the residents of the isolated old Nostromo being picked off one by one. It relies on the same kind of 'Don't go in there!', 'He's behind you!' triggers.

One of the problems with monster movies is the monster itself. It is usually only partly glimpsed through the movie until the reveal at the end where it often disappoints. But not the alien designed by the late H R Giger. That still looks great. It's one of the few movie monsters that you can look at for a long time and still be awed by it.

Sunday, 7 September 2014

We went up to the north Norfolk coast today - our traditional last day of the school holidays trip. The last few years we have gone to Thornham and Titchwell, but this year we decided to go to the wonderful wide beach at Holkham for a long walk and a late lunch before picking blackberries on the way back.

Holkham is a special place - much nicer out of season. We came here once winter when there was snow on the sand and geese flying in through the mist to feed on the farmland behind the woods.

Those woods were used for the location of the barrow in the BBC Ghost Story for Christmas adaptation of M R James' A Warning to the Curious and the hapless Paxton (Peter Vaughan) is chased across the beach by the cowled guardian in one of the most effective scenes in any of the series of Lawrence Gordon Clark films.

The beach also stood in for America - or at least the Elizabethan colony of Virginia - at the end of the film Shakespeare in Love.

Today it was sparsely populated, with horses being taken down to the sea with varying degrees of enthusiasm. Far off in the distance we could see riders and horses quite a long way out, the water up to the riders knees.

About Me

I am an writer, illustrator and painter.
My most recent books are 'The Dead Men Stood Together' and 'The Last of the Spirits' published by Bloomsbury.
I am available for school, library and festival events and these can be arranged through the publicity department of my publishers or through Author Aloud. If you wish to contact me you can either do this through my publishers or via my agent (there is a link below) or simply leave a comment on the blog. Comments go into my email inbox before they are published.

UK paperback published by Bloomsbury October 2014

Published by Bloomsbury September 2013

UK paperback published by Bloomsbury 2014

Published by Bloomsbury March 2013

Shortlisted for the Angus Book Award 2015. Shortlisted for the FAB Book Award 2015

German edition

Thai edition published by Tawansong

Published by Bloomsbury November 2012

Published by Bloomsbury March 2012

Published by Bloomsbury October 2011

Winner of BASH (Book Award St Helens) 2013. Highly Commended in the YA category of the Sheffield Children's Book Award 2012. Shortlisted for the Wandsworth FAB book awards. Shortlisted for the Coventry Inspiration Book Awards. Shortlisted for the North East Teenage Book Award 2012. Shortlisted for the UKLA Children's Book Award 12-16 Category 2013. Longlisted for the Carnegie Medal 2013. Longlisted for the Catalyst Book Award 2012/13. Longlisted for the Sussex Coast Schools Amazing Book Award 2013. Shortlisted for the Angus Book Award, shortlisted for the Falkirk RED Book Award 2013, chosen as a 'Future Classic' in the Booktrust Schools Library Pack

Czech edition published by Argo

US edition published by Bloomsbury

German edition published by bloomoon

Italian edition published by Newton Compton

Paperback published by Bloomsbury October 2011

Published by Bloomsbury

Shortlisted for the Leeds Book Award 2011. Shortlisted for the Salford Children's Book Award 2011. Longlisted for the UKLA Children's Book Award 2011 (12-16). Longlisted for the Carnegie Medal 2012

US edition published by Bloomsbury

Japanese edition

Thai edition published by Tawansong

Published by Pearson June 2011

Published for World Book Day March 2011

Published by Bloomsbury March 2011

UK edition published by Bloomsbury.

Winner of the Dracula Society's Children of the Night Award 2009

Dutch edition published by Pimento

Brazilian edition published by Editora Norma

Czech edition published by Argo

Portuguese edition published by Bertrand Editora

Japanese edition published by Rironsha

Swedish edition published by Raben and Sjogren

German edition published by Bloomsbury

Turkish edition published by Tudem

Thai edition published by Tawan

Published by Bloomsbury March 2011

UK edition published by Bloomsbury

Shortlisted for the Salford Children's Book Award 2009, Longlisted for the Booktrust Teenage Prize 2009. Longlisted for the Doncaster Book Award 2009/10, longlisted for the Manchester Book Award 2010. Shortlisted for the Westminster Book Award 2010

US edition published by Bloomsbury

Dutch edition published by Pimento

Winner of a CPNB Vlag & Wimpel award 2010

Portuguese edition published by Editora Bertrand

German edition published by Bloomsbury

Swedish edition published by Raben & Sjogren

Turkish edition published by Tudem

Japanese edition published by Rironsha

Italian edition published by Newton Compton

Spanish edition published by Ediciones SM

Colombian (Spanish) edition published by Norma

Czech edition published by Argo

Thai edition published by Tawan

Published by Bloomsbury March 2011

UK edition published by Bloomsbury

Shortlisted for the UKLA Children's Book Award 2008. Longlisted for the Lincolnshire Young People's Book Award 2008/9. Longlisted for the Manchester Book Award 2009. Longlisted for the Carnegie Medal 2009. Shortlisted for the Calderdale Children's Book of the Year 2009. Shortlisted for the North East Book Award 2009, shortlisted for the Coventry Inspiration Book Award 2010

US edition published by Bloomsbury

Portuguese edition published by Editora Bertrand

German edition published by Bloomsbury.

Shortlisted for the Deutscher Jugendliteraturpreis 2011

Italian edition published by Newton Compton

Thai edition published

Brazilian (Portuguese) edition published by Rocco

Colombian (Spanish) edition published by Norma

Dutch edition published by Pimento

Japanese edition published by Rironsha

Swedish edition published by Raben & Sjogren

Spanish edition published by Ediciones SM

Czech edition published by Argo

Polish edition published by Egmont

Thai edition published by Tawan

Published by Scholastic

Published by Random House

Published by Scholastic

US edition published by Knopf

Shortlisted for a Mystery Writers of America 'Edgar' award 2004

UK edition published by Random House

Japanese edition published by Poplar-Sha

Published by Random House

Longlisted for the Lincolnshire Young People's Book Award 2005. Shortlisted for the Gateshead Children's Book Award 2005